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District of North Vancouver Mayor Mike Little says he’s running to reclaim his seat leading municipal council because he loves the job and still sees work to do on crucial issues facing District of North Vancouver residents.
Little says he’s built up enough experience, both as mayor and as a three-term councillor prior to that, to understand how decisions made by council will impact the municipality.
Little said hands down the biggest issue faced by people in North Vancouver is transportation.
“It’s affecting our residents day in and day out. It's also deeply affecting people who come to the North Shore for employment and making it very hard for them to continue to be employed on the North Shore.
“We need to sit down and have a serious talk about the life of the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge and how it can be replaced and be part of the solution to both our transit challenges and our traffic challenges on the North Shore.”
Little, a former three-term councillor, won the mayor’s chair in 2018 with 59 per cent of the vote, besting candidate Ash Amlani of the Building Bridges slate by more than 8,000 votes.
This time, Little is in a face-off with two-term term councillor Mathew Bond.
Housing affordability remains a huge challenge in a desirable community like the North Shore, said Little. He said the district needs to prioritize purpose-built rental and housing that is truly affordable over simply building more units or letting developers pay fees towards that goal in the future.
“We will never be able to meet the global demand for premium housing that is out there for our community. We really have to be strategic and make sure that the housing we're producing is the housing that we need,” he said.
Little said his voting record shows that he supports "modest, thoughtful growth.”
One storm cloud on the horizon is a “significant staffing challenge” the municipality is now facing, he said.
Outside of municipal politics, Little was on the management team for a port terminal for almost two decades. He also represented the Conservative Party in the 2015 federal election in Burnaby North–Seymour. He and his family, including his wife and children, live in North Vancouver.
